Safety beds such as baby cribs and beds found in medical facilities and geriatric facilities normally include a guard rail assembly which can be raised to prevent the patient from falling out of the bed and lowered to allow the patient to ingress and egress the bed. For instance, baby cribs typically include a top side that can be dropped into a lowered position to facilitate placing the baby in or removing the baby from the crib and then can be lifted to a raised position and locked in the raised position. Many different guiding and locking arrangements have been developed for guiding the vertical sliding motion of a drop side and for locking the gate in the raised position. Some of these prior locking mechanisms have employed a pair of spring loaded pins fixed to the upper bar of the drop side and engageable with holes or recesses in a fixed structure of the crib. In this type of mechanism, both pins must be simultaneously disengaged from the holes or recesses in order to drop the gate. The safety beds for medical facilities include a guard rail assembly which typically has the top and bottom horizontal rails in a series of spaced vertical bars therebetween to form a lattice-type structure. Strict governmental standards have been specifically mandated for the construction of safety beds. Even so, patient's have on occasion fallen from beds. Safety beds are not only used in a hospital or similar environment but are also used in the home for elderly and disabled person and as cribs for holding a baby.
The present invention provides a safety bed having tall sides with a pair of entry panels sliding in tracks which can be lifted and slid from below the mattress level for easy patient access and locked in place with one panel atop the other.
In the past, there have been numerous patents for safety beds and cribs which have entry panels and guard rails which are raised or lowered to allow the entry of a patient. These include the Draheim et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,167,580 for a crib dropside assembly and a method of installation. The dropside is secured to opposing pairs of tracks with each track including a pair of generally parallel grooves, one of which extends substantially below the other to allow the dropside pins to slide from one to the other for holding the dropside in a raised position. In the Guillot U.S. Pat. No. 6,505,360 a crib has a drop side and guiding and locking mechanism and a vertically slidable drop side with a guiding or locking mechanism for guiding the vertical movement of the drop side and for locking the gate in a selected position. In the Wells et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,453,491, a safety bed has a releasable guard rail assembly. The Branca-Barnes et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,870 provides a safety bed for children who are disabled and cannot care for themselves and uses a pair of fold-down plus slide-down side panels hinged together for permitting servicing of the bed. The A. W. Lehman, Jr. et al. U.S. Pat. No. 2,329,475 is for a crib and the method of mounting the sides of the crib. The Pham U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,593 is a device for lifting and lowering a movable side of a baby's bed. The Li U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,632 is a lifting gate control device for a baby's crib while the W. L. Lundin U.S. Pat. No. 2,369,834 is a baby crib having sides extending up above the bed in order to prevent the infant from rolling out of the crib and has a dropside which can be lowered from the outside of the crib by a kick of the foot. In the W. C. Baxter U. S. Pat. No. 1,695,571, a crib is provided in which a side can be raised or lowered through a sliding movement for ready access to the crib. The C. H. Boardman U.S. Pat. No. 1,465,414 is a crib having a hinged top that can be firmly locked when desired.
The present invention provides a safety bed which has a pair of panels on one side thereof which can be rapidly lifted and locked in a raised position and quickly lowered to a position below the top edge of the mattress of the bed for easy access into and out of the bed.